SAN DIEGO  Incoming Republican governors from Pennsylvania to New Mexico are vowing to keep campaign promises to slice already cut-to-the-bone budgets and balance them without raising taxes.

In doing so, GOP leaders intent on conservative governance signaled a desire to try to fundamentally change state government, shrinking it significantly. And they acknowledged that could mean more job losses and service cuts to already recession-hammered states anticipating more budget trouble ahead.

"While we're all facing these challenges, there are incredible opportunities for us to go look at what the core missions of government were, and redefine the role," said South Carolina Gov.-elect Nikki Haley, adding that the institution was never intended to be all things to all people. "We're going to have to scale back."

"We have to be honest with the people of our states and say, 'This is going to hurt. We're going to struggle,'" Haley added. But she said she was confident that the GOP's remaking-government approach ultimately would make Republicans  and their states  stronger.

At the annual Republican Governors' Association conference this week in California, incoming and current GOP governors insisted that their methods  which Democratic critics deride as draconian  would prevent another bout of catastrophic fiscal conditions over the long term.

--snip

Most if not all Republican governors are looking at how to block parts of Obama's health care law.

"It's going to bankrupt us," said Rick Scott, Florida's next chief executive, who once ran a sprawling health care company. Besides targeting the health care law, he also has vowed to simultaneously return spending to 2004 levels and eliminate corporate income taxes. Florida faces an estimated $2.5 billion deficit.

Lets cut the parasite government employees salaries and benefits to the bone. Lets go through the blue pages and reduce that listing to just one single page with one column. Make everyone go out and get a job. No more benefits for parasites. Except those who are truly handicapped and unable to provide for themselves. Protect the free market, fight fraud, settle disputes peacefully among the citizens and there really isn’t much else for them to do, other than to maintain the militia. Start by cashing out the state pension fund and converting it to a 401k. Then no more lifetime health benefits with gold plated coverage. Then cut taxes 50 percent, repeat process.

The authoress Liz Sidoti is a blooming idiot. How did the colonies and states ever manage to get along from 1620 until about 1960? How did we manage to build public infrastructure and keep our public squares in excellent shape? Perhaps we did it by not coddling everybody from cradle to grave with "government services."

I would have burst out laughing too but I saw Liz Sidoti wrote it so I was forewarned--she's a Lib hack if there ever was one.

Get ready for AP, Reuters and the rest to mindlessly pull out their "Republicans are slashing already depleted budgets and killing the elderly and children in the process" templates. Any decrease, even simply in the rate of growth that was budgeted by spending-happy Dems in prior years, will be characterized as turning America into a scene out of Dickens' Hard Times.

Get ready for AP, Reuters and the rest to mindlessly pull out their "Republicans are slashing already depleted budgets and killing the elderly and children in the process" templates.

What's interesting is that they've been doing this to Mitch Daniels here in Indiana for a couple years, and Republicans this month took over the state house of representatives and achieved a supermajority in the state senate.

Little by little, taxpayers are starting to understand that real spending cuts are the only way out.

If you hear of a Republican governor taking my advice and doing the following, ping me.

DEFUND THE ENTIRE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.

States invoke their 10th amendment rights and tell their citizens to stop paying Federal Income Tax.

States make it illegal for companies to take Federal Income Tax out of employee wages.

States then tax their own citizens the appropriate amount to pay for the only things the Constitution allows the Feds to do - protect the borders and insure free trade across state lines - and then pass that along to the Feds. (Divide what border protection & trade regulation costs by the total number of US citizens then multiply that number by the states population.)

If the Federal government still refuses to protect our borders, then the states can keep that money and do it themselves.

Mitch knows how to privatize govt services. That’s much more complicated than simply cutting and dumping.

For example, he contracted out some services to IBM. Unfortunately they screwed up. Mitch gave the jobs back to the govt employees since they could actually do a better job. The worse thing you can do in privatization is to institutionalize the private contractor so that they act as if they were a protected govt bureaucracy.

22
posted on 11/18/2010 3:47:06 PM PST
by ari-freedom
(Islam is at war against America, while America is at the mall.)

"We have to be honest with the people of our states and say, 'This is going to hurt. We're going to struggle,'" Haley added. But she said she was confident that the GOP's remaking-government approach ultimately would make Republicans  and their states  stronger.

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